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DoJ Indicts E-Gold On Money Laundering
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-04-30
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A digital currency company that has been known to be favored by criminals in their illicit online activities found itself on the receiving end of federal indictments.
 | | DoJ Indicts E-Gold On Money Laundering |  |
The Department of Justice has finally targeted E-Gold for law enforcement action. A federal grand jury in Washington DC handed out indictments on charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and running an unlicensed money transmitting business.
A statement from the DoJ said E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc, along with their owners, were indicted on April 24th, with the indictments unsealed on April 27th.
"Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and widespread international money remitting business, unsupervised and unregulated by any entity in the world, which allowed for anonymous transfers of value at a click of a mouse," said U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor for the District of Columbia.
"Not surprisingly, criminals of every stripe gravitated to E-Gold as a place to move their money with impunity. As alleged in the indictment, the defendants in this case knowingly allowed them to do so and profited from their crimes."
E-Gold allowed people to open an account with only an email address. The company performed money transfers as directed by account holders. DoJ said many of these transactions were funded by illicit gains, and that the company and its owners knew they were moving money illegally.
"As alleged in the indictment, the E-Gold payment system has been a preferred means of payment for child pornography distributors, identity thieves, online scammers, and other criminals around the world to launder their illegal income anonymously," said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division.
Security firm F-Secure wrote about the indictment on their blog, and were unsurprised about the development. "We have no information whether E-gold staff has been aware of misuse of their services, or whether they have been able to do anything to prevent misuse. But we sure have seen lots of criminals using E-Gold."
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Tags: e-gold, Justice Department
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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